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Scared to Death by a Ghost Cambridge, Massachusettsc.1800

Harvard University was established in 1636, and is the oldest college in
America. The hallowed halls of old Harvard have produced some ghost stories over
the past four centuries. This story is attributed to Washington Allston, the
landscape painter, who graduated from Harvard in 1800.

It is told that a student was scared to death, either by participants
in a college prank, or by a real ghost that appeared while such a prank
was taking place.

"In those reunions which used so often to take place in the students'
chambers, for conversation, cigar-smoking, and social enjoyment, the
subject of ghosts had been very frequently discussed. Some students from
the country told long and dreadful stories, well authenticated by their
grandmothers and maiden aunts, of real, veritable ghosts appearing in
the old fashioned legitimate way, dressed in long white robes and making
appalling revelations of crimes and hidden treasures, and then vanishing
instantly—going off without beat of drum, and leaving the astonished and
horrified spectator in the most pitiable state.

To these narratives many of the student auditors would 'seriously
incline,' while others counterfeited belief, in order to induce the
narrators to afford them more entertainment of the same sort. In fact,
on one occasion, the whole coterie, with a single exception, declared
their unqualified belief in ghosts. The stories they had just heard were
too accurate, circumstantial, and authentic, to be doubted. There was no
withstanding the accumulation of evidence. The single dissenter from
this opinion, however, stubbornly declared that there must be some
mistake. The thing was too absurd in itself to gain his belief. He would
never believe in ghosts till he should see one with his own eyes. As for
fearing them, 'he would like to see the ghost that could frighten him.'

One of his fellow students, as far from a real belief in supernatural
appearances as himself, resolved, nevertheless, to put the hero's
courage to the proof.

Accordingly on the next evening after that when this remarkable
conversation took place, at a very late hour, he dressed himself up in
white, and quietly glided into the chamber of his companion, who was
lying alone in his bed and wide awake.

The ghost-student, knowing that his friend always slept with loaded
pistols under his pillow, had previously taken care to draw out the
bullets from them; for he was too well acquainted with the impetuous
character of the other to doubt that he would use them on such an
occasion. On the appearance of the spectre, the hero sat up in bed and
very deliberately took a survey of him, as well as the 'struggling
moonbeam's misty light' shining in at the windows would permit. The
ghost glided across the room, and, standing before the bed, raised his
hand in an awful and menacing manner, according to the most approved
fashion of ghostdom. Still the whole performance failed to shake the
firm nerves of the Harvard ghost-seer. He only laughed, and shouted
aloud in melodramatic form of speech, " Vanish ! I fear you not!"

The spectre was motionless, still standing and gazing upon him with
ghastly masked face. Our hero, at length, determined to put the
apparition to the proof, and 'teach him never to come there no more,'
took one of the pistols from beneath his pillow and fired it point blank
in the spectre's face. When the smoke cleared away—there stood the grim
figure, as before, immovable and apparently invulnerable.
Instantaneously the appalling belief came over the mind of the unhappy
beholder that he was actually in the presence of a spirit from the other
world. All his preconceived opinions—all his habits of thought, all his
vaunted courage vanished at once. His whole being was changed; and he
instantly fell into the most frightful convulsions.

His companion, who had been watching the effect of his experiment,
became alarmed in his turn; and called in others from the entry who had
participated in the ill-timed joke. Medical aid was called in, and every
appliance resorted to for his recovery. But it was all in vain.
Convulsion succeeded convulsion; and the unfortunate youth never
recovered sufficient consciousness to be made aware of the trick that
had been played upon him, until the melancholy scene was closed by his
untimely death.

This story has its moral. The mind of man is too delicate and
complicated a structure to be tampered with by experiments of this
description. Whatever may be one's opinion of ghosts, it is dangerous to
counterfeit any thing of this kind for the purpose of producing terror
in the mind of another."

Unrelated, Allston, Massachusetts, the neighborhood in Boston, was
named after William Allston. He was a native of South Carolina, but
lived in Cambridge for about 25 years of his life.